Mina P.O. Dec.

2013/April 2014 Dwyer 3/4 Radish Lab Report

Question: How do the height and weight of radish plants in different light conditions show that plants can perform both photosynthesis and cellular respiration? Procedure: 1. Line a petri dish with 4 layers of damp paper towels that are cut to fit easily into the dish. Make five dishes the same way for each light treatment group. 2. Label the petri dishes with a piece of tape folded over itself and attached to the side of the dish. The label should include name/s of the people doing the experiment and the treatment group (light or dark). 3. Weigh an envelope for each petri dish. Label the envelope the same way as the dishes. 4. Add 0.5 grams of radish seeds to each dish. Disperse the seeds evenly. 5. Put half of the dishes in a light setting and the other half in a dark setting. 6. Water both groups of seeds with 10ml of water each day (for 7 days total). 7. After 7 days, observe what the seeds look like. Record what you can see: color and height. Then, measure the tallest seedling from each dish and record this data. 8. Transfer all the biological matter (the seeds and their sprouts) from each dish into the individually labeled envelopes. Place all the envelopes into a dehydrator for 24 hours. 9. After 24 hours, weigh the envelopes. Subtract the initial weight of the envelope and the original weight of the seeds (0.5 grams) from the final weight. This resulting number is the change in weight of the seeds. A negative number indicates a loss in weight, a

Mina P.O. Dec. 2013/April 2014 Dwyer 3/4 positive number indicates a weight gain, and zero indicates no change. Do calculations for every envelope. Hypothesis: If 0.5 grams of radish seeds are placed separately in light and dark environments and are provided with equal amounts of water, I predict that the seeds in sunlight will gain biomass, and the seeds in a dark environment will lose biomass. The seeds given light will be taller than the ones without light. This will happen because plants need sunlight to do photosynthesis, construct glucose, and grow. The process of photosynthesis will make the plants taller and more massive. Data:

Mina P.O. Dec. 2013/April 2014 Dwyer 3/4

Results: By looking at the sprouted seeds, I observed their color and compared their heights. The radish seeds that had been in the dark were lanky, tall, and yellow. The plants grown in a light environment were shorter, wider, and were darker green. Averaged data is represented in the graphs above. The data in the orange graph represent the tallest seedling's height for each treatment. Radish seeds in the dark exceeded the seeds in light by 3.2 cm in terms of height. The green graph displays the difference between original and final biomass for both experiments. The light treatment seeds gained 0.26 of a gram, twice the weight that the dark treatment seeds lost (0.13 g). Discussion: My hypothesis was partially correct. The seeds treated with light gained much more biomass, as anticipated. In fact, the average weight gain was twice as much as the loss for the dark treatment seeds. Contrary to my expectation, these photosynthesizing plants (that had a height of 1.4 cm) were much shorter than the ones in the dark environment; these were 4.6 cm tall. This data set shows that the dark treatment seeds were respiring, because their loss of biomass suggests that the seeds were consuming their endosperms. In contrast, the seeds in sunlight were able to grow by conducting photosynthesis. The dark-treated seeds grew taller than the light-treated seeds because they were extending out as they searched for light. The seeds in light had no need to consume their endosperm because they could produce glucose, which enabled them to conserve mass. This way the light treatment seeds grew, measured in height and mass, at a familiar pace. Dark-treatment seeds grew abnormally tall to reach light and lost weight because they consumed

Mina P.O. Dec. 2013/April 2014 Dwyer 3/4 their endosperm with the purpose of getting taller. This lab supports the fact that plants photosynthesize and suggests that they also respire.

Conclusion: Finally, one can see that plants can do cellular respiration in addition to photosynthesis. There is clear evidence that seeds in a dark environment can grow by using their endosperm even though they cannot photosynthesize. Plants "eat" their endosperm instead of using glucose produced in photosynthesis. Unfortunately our data may have been negatively affected by a few errors. The scale only displayed a measurement in grams of the ones and tenths places, and different petri dishes could have gotten variable amounts of seeds. Also, when measuring the height of the radish plants, we had to decide quickly which sprout was the tallest. These two occurrences during measurement may have reduced accuracy. In future experimentation, I would like to use a chemical called Tetrazolium Chloride (TZ) to sufficiently verify that plants do cellular respiration. TZ (basically) highlights respiring cells. I would like to know if plants that are able to photosynthesize also respire at the same time. Also, in another experiment, I would put a seed that had just been in the dark into light, and vice versa. I would compare this to results from the first experiment to see if the new data reflected previous data for the light or the dark treatment. This would tell me if plants are able to adapt quickly to new conditions by using the processes of cellular respiration and photosynthesis.